Pat Shingleton: "The Storm, My Daughter..."

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The Gulf of Mexico, Caribbean and Atlantic are quiet but on this date in 1766, a powerful hurricane leveled the tiny village of Trois-Islets on the island of Martinique. As noted, Joseph-Gaspard Tascher was one of the island's wealthy planters and suffered total financial ruin from the devastating storm. In dire straits, he did what many attempted in those days; marrying their offspring into wealth. After the storm, his young daughter, Marie Josephine Rose, returned to France and married an army officer, the Vicomte de Beauharnais, who was guillotined in 1794. Two years later she married an officer with a better "head on his shoulders" who crowned himself in 1804. She became Empress Josephine of France, wife of Napoleon Bonaparte.